Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Wolf, rabbi of Kherson and Chabad emissary, is currently in Germany and it is not certain that he will return to Ukraine.
Rabbi Wolff spoke by phone with the New York Times from Berlin and said that he is not sure when or even if he will ever return to Ukraine. The rabbi claimed in the conversation that some people in the city suspect him of collaborating with the Russians because he allowed a number of Jewish Russian officers from the occupying force to join prayers in his synagogue.
The rabbi said that the Russian officers showed up at the synagogue with armed guards and that there was no way to refuse them. He said that he and his family could have left Kherson at the beginning of the war and avoided all of this, as so many policemen and politicians did, but they stayed and the walls of their house shook from shelling.
“All these people who fled are judging us,” he said. “These are cruel times.” The Russians stormed Kherson on February 24, the first day of the war, coming from the Crimea with ease. Their arrival raised suspicions of local complicity. The Ukrainian government is currently investigating several intelligence officers suspected of leaking critical information about Kherson’s defenses to the Russians.